Hyper Light Breaker developer Heart Machine has updated the early access game after acknowledging negative feedback from players.
The game released on 14th January but so far has mixed reviews on Steam, with performance problems, a confusing gameplay loop, and high difficulty being the main issues Heart Machine promised to address.
In a social media post, the studio acknowledged the “risk” taken with an early access release and that much of the feedback was “reasonable”.
“Part of releasing the game in Early Access means we do take on the risk of negative early reviews and feedback,” the post reads. “Everyone has different expectations for an Early Access game.
“All the feedback about the lack of keybinding and sensitivity controls, FPS drops etc. is extremely reasonable. And, receiving large quantities of the same actionable requests actually helps us determine how to prioritise future updates.”
Then, last week, a new patch was released to add a rework of medkits as suggested by the game’s community.
Now, players will start each run of the roguelike with a medkit and these will auto-refill on the launch of a run. This should make the game a little easier to get going with.
Other changes include reducing enemy aggro distance, increasing the time between waves of enemies in Crown Fights, and bug fixes.
While reaction to the game has been mixed, it’s clear Heart Machine is listening and acting directly upon community suggestions.
“We made Hyper Light Breaker with Early Access in mind to have it grow and evolve with our community, and today’s patch represents that as we made some pretty big changes, including a rework on Medkits, thanks to your feedback,” said Michael Clark, lead producer on Hyper Light Breaker.
An early access roadmap is also planned for later this week, to firm up the studio’s ongoing plans for the game.
“Hyper Light Breaker is really, really punishing,” wrote Christian Donlan on Hyper Light Breaker’s release. “It’s punishing in a way that I understand, because it’s probably balanced for multiplayer and because this is probably a small team who can’t endlessly feed new stuff into the procedural maw, and so they need players to take their time with what’s there. But it makes for an uninviting introduction if you’re a fan of the series and you love these games for their lonely beauty.”
fbq('init', '560747571485047');
fbq('track', 'PageView'); window.facebookPixelsDone = true;
window.dispatchEvent(new Event('BrockmanFacebookPixelsEnabled')); }
window.addEventListener('BrockmanTargetingCookiesAllowed', appendFacebookPixels);